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SUMMARY:BioE COLLOQUIA SERIES:  "Mass Photometry: Weighing Molecules with 
 Light"
DTSTART:20200224T121500
DTSTAMP:20260506T154733Z
UID:bdd9e9e6190b7777b8291b372653947a595432ae258dc64fc9ef91a8
CATEGORIES:Conferences - Seminars
DESCRIPTION:Prof. Philipp Kukura\, Department of Chemistry\, University of
  Oxford (UK)\nWEEKLY BIOENGINEERING COLLOQUIA SERIES\n(sandwiches served)\
 n\n\nAbstract:\nInteractions between biomolecules control the processes of
  life in health\, and their malfunction in disease\, making their characte
 rization and quantification essential to our understanding of the underlyi
 ng molecular mechanisms. I will introduce mass photometry\, the accurate m
 ass measurement of individual molecules in solution by light scattering\, 
 as a general approach for studying biomolecular structure\, function\, and
  regulation. I will illustrate the reach of mass photometry by demonstrati
 ng its applicability to both nucleic acids and membrane proteins in additi
 on to lipids\, sugars and polypeptides\, thereby covering the majority of 
 biomolecules. Combination of this broad applicability with the ability to 
 accurately determine the relative amounts of species in complex mixtures w
 ithout the need for labels or other sample modifications results in a univ
 ersal method to study interaction stoichiometries\, energetics and kinetic
 s. More trivially\, although no less powerful\, I will show that mass phot
 ometry sets new standards for evaluating sample homogeneity\, which will l
 ikely have considerable impact on structural biology workflows\, and in vi
 tro studies of protein function and regulation more generally. Taken toget
 her\, these results establish mass photometry as an extremely powerful\, s
 olution-based\, label-free\, yet single molecule method to quantify and th
 ereby study biomolecular structure and interactions. In combination with f
 uture improvements in both technical capabilities and assays\, mass photom
 etry could realise the dream of revealing biomolecular mechanisms directly
  at the molecular level.\n\nBio:\nI was born in Bratislava\, then Czechosl
 ovakia and moved to Germany at the age of four\, where I grew up. I read C
 hemistry at St Hugh’s College Oxford until 2002 and did a PhD at the Uni
 versity of California\, Berkeley with Rich Mathies in ultrafast spectrosco
 py before moving to ETH Zurich to work with Vahid Sandoghdar on nano-optic
 s. After returning to Oxford initially as an EPSRC Career Acceleration Fel
 low in 2010\, I was elected to a tutorial fellowship at Exeter College in 
 2011 and promoted to Full Professor in 2016. Recent awards include those b
 y the Royal Society of Chemistry (Harrison-Meldola 2011 and Marlow 2015)\,
  the European Biophysical Society Association (Young Investigator Medal 20
 17)\, a Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award (2018) and selection as
  a UK Blavatnik Award Finalist (2018). I also hold an ERC Starting Investi
 gator Grant.\n\n\nZoom link for attending remotely: https://epfl.zoom.us/j
 /945192999
LOCATION:SV 1717 https://plan.epfl.ch/?room==SV%201717
STATUS:CONFIRMED
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